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eco-teachers_lounge

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A group for teachers to exchange ideas. A place where their students can connect, around the world, to build an Earth Day project together. Helping kids see the relationship between local and global pollution problems, and some solutions for both.

Members: 24
Created By: Meredith Gossland
Latest Activity: May 9

Have any of you introduced solar cooking to your classes? It is a great way to raise funds too. Kids can make their own cardboard and aluminum foil solar ovens...bake cookies and raise funds for earthday projects. For more information about solar cooking check out this wikipedia article
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Minimum_Solar_Box_Cooker

Discussion Forum

Teens in action
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Started by Meredith Gossland. Last reply by Jim Apr 2.

Earthday Photo Contest

The Institute for Global Strategies is holding a photo contest for middle schoolers (grades 5-8) The website is http://www.strategies.org/EarthDayPhoto. The idea is for students to take a picture b... Continue

Tagged: photography, nature

Started by Becky L Mar 25

Grant money for K-12 teachers
2 Replies

Here in California there is over a million dollars in Grant money available to teachers who are creating new ideas for teaching about environmental stuff.......in any class, history to math. Do any... Continue

Tagged: money, teachers, eco, grants, environment

Started by Meredith Gossland. Last reply by Meredith Gossland Mar 2.

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Comment by Meredith Gossland on April 16, 2008 at 10:01am: Hi everyone,

I have been a little consumed with my private life lately. My Dad passed away and my first earth day event took place so it has been crazy here. In June I will be starting up a teen eco-entrepreneur class that will run for 12 weeks Monday though Friday for 4 hours a day.
Teaching teens the basics of business, helping them to open real businesses and then guiding them to brainstorm ways to make it an ecologically sound enterprise, that also benefits people in some way. (for instance medical emergency ID bracelets for kids instead of just jewlry, or an art gallery with pictures that address Global Warming or use only environmentally sound materials or a cleaning service that uses on eco-safe products or writing books of poetry using only 100% recycled paper and soy inks.) The basic business curriculum is free from Merrill Lynch, the eco-aspect is something that will be added to basic curriculum. I will let you know how it goes.

Another educational project I'll be working on is to get kids to write a book about what they see happening to the world around them in terms of the environment. It includes field trips to see local environmental problems, to work to solve the problem on some level and then to write about their experience. ( This can range from looking at local wildlife issues, to health issues with foods, to cleaning up local waterways or beaches that are filled with trash.... going weekly to the same area and collecting trash then weighing it and and classifying the kinds of trash they find I.E. plastic, metal,paper.
Then writing a letter to the local newspapers about thier findings and adding the information to their book. Raising money to publish the book or finding a publisher who will pay for the book (profits should go back, in large part, to fund the clean up projects) Then sending copies of the book to local politicians, book reviewers in both magazines and newspapers, environmental groups such as Sierra Club for sale on their websites, their school board, their state enviromental committees and of course their parents. If the book is published by a large publisher then of course it wold be sold in bookstores but if it is self published then the classes will market the book themselves sending copies to independant book stores and putting copies up for sale on Amazon or Ebay.

Comment by sharonstahoviak on March 28, 2008 at 9:56am: I am an art teacher in a rural community that has a deaf ear to environmental issues. I would like to make a difference by incorporating environmental education into my lesson plans. Where can I find "green art project ideas"?